State probes police case in Jefferson

Special prosecutor eyes claims of misconduct

JEFFERSON - A special prosecutor appointed to investigate allegations of misconduct at the Jefferson Police Department is calling on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to help with the inquiry.

ADVERTISEMENT

Print-ready version

Send to a friend

Subscribe to the Banner-Herald

E-mail the Editor

Discuss in Forums

Rick Malone, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia, is heading up an investigation into theft of city property, forgery of time cards and misuse of city property at the police department. Malone was appointed by state Attorney General Thurbert Baker to lead the investigation after Jackson County District Attorney Tim Madison recused himself.

The state investigation comes on the heels of an internal investigation the department conducted of former officer Mario Johnson. The internal probe found that the officer could not be charged for using city gas in his personal vehicle, but police charged his friend - Alisa Johnson - with theft, saying she used a city gas pump three times and put city gas in her vehicle.

On Friday morning, Malone contacted the Athens office of the GBI and plans to follow that phone call with a formal request for the agency to investigate the department, he said. No time frame has been set for how long the state investigation might last.

"I really don't know what (evidence) there is," Malone said Friday.

On Friday afternoon, Jefferson Police Chief Darren Glenn said he was not aware of the special prosecutor and could not comment.

After an Aug. 7 Athens Banner-Herald article about the department's internal investigation, Glenn sent the department's internal affairs investigation to City Solicitor Gabriel Bradford. He found that the department "conducted a thorough and extensive investigation," according to an Aug. 8 letter he sent to the Jefferson City Council that was released by the Jefferson Police Department.

"The decision to not charge Mario Johnson with any crime is supported by me in my capacity as Solicitor as I would be unable to conduct a successful prosecution based on the inability to prove the essential element of criminal intent," Bradford wrote in the letter.

The episode has garnered much attention by city residents, but the state investigation may put rumors to rest, Malone said.

"I realize that there are people who have an interest in this," Malone said. "We're going to do everything we can expeditiously, but we're not going to give up finding the truth by being hasty."

In addition to theft allegations, Malone also was asked to look into possible forgery of time cards.

On July 26, Jefferson Councilman Bosie Griffith called Jefferson police Capt. Dennis Thomas about Mario Johnson's timecards, asking whether the police department paid the officer for working with the football team at Jefferson High School.

Police initially paid Mario Johnson, a former professional football player, for helping out with the team, and Thomas told Griffith he "thought he was doing it as a service to the school and the community as we have let officers help the school in other ways," according to a memo Thomas sent to Glenn on July 27. The department later recouped the money by docking his vacation time, according to a handwritten note on an undated timecard released by police.

Johnson resigned from the department July 27.

Since the local district attorney recused himself from investigating the case, it went to Baker's office. The state attorney general's office could either handle the case itself, assign a prosecutor from another judicial circuit to handle the case or pick a private practice attorney to investigate, said Baker's spokesman, Russ Willard.

"Our office performed an administrative function of assigning another attorney to handle it," Willard said. "In effect, we appointed a replacement DA for this case."

Under the appointment, Malone can still appoint someone in his office to formally head the investigation.

In recusing himself from the case, Madison cited the high number of cases his office prosecutes for the Jefferson Police Department, Willard said. Madison declined to comment Wednesday.